The Bridge That Wasn't Built to Last Forever
Updated: 2 days ago
It was a Sunday morning, and Manila was doing that rare thing it does only on Sundays: letting you breathe.
I was driving across Jones Bridge. Binondo behind me, Intramuros ahead, the Pasig flat and brown beneath. The Madre Filipina statues stood on their pedestals as always, looking serene amid the traffic. Nothing special. A drive I have made a hundred times.
Except this time I looked upstream.
One block up, where Calle Nueva meets the river — E.T. Yuchengco Street now — there is nothing. No bridge. No footings. Just water moving as it always has. And yet I know exactly what used to stand there. I own pictures of it. I have held them in my hands, turned them over, read the messages on their backs. For nearly three hundred years, that empty stretch of river was the most important crossing in the Philippines.
They called it the Puente de España. The Bridge of Spain.
And I have been a little obsessed with it for a while now.
How a Collector Gets Hooked
It started, as these things usually do, with an eBay auction and a late night. A couple of years ago, I won an original silver-print photograph. Textured mount. Sepia going soft at the edges. And across the bottom, in someone's hurried ink: Spanish Bridge Manila.
Look closely. Calesas blurred into ghosts by the long exposure. Umbrellas against the sun. Men in white walking toward Intramuros. In the foreground, the woven nipa roofs of cascos, the cargo boats that worked the Pasig, moored right up against the piers. Somebody stood on that riverbank more than a century ago, held still, and opened the shutter.
I thought that was the peak. It wasn't.
Then came the London auction. A pioneer card — a chromolithograph titled Recuerdo de Manila, the only drawn image of the bridge I own. I've told that story in full in our video, so I won't relive every heart-stopping second here. Let's just say it was tight, and I am still recovering.
More recently, we produced a piece on photographer Manuel Arias y Rodriguez. And there it was again. Among his postcards: El Puente de España (Manila). (See plate 5 below). This was part of a piece we recently wrote about: https://www.nineteenkopongkopong.com/post/the-bookseller-who-photographed-a-revolution
At some point a collector has to admit what is happening. The bridge kept finding me. So I stopped pretending and started hunting and rummaging — any postcard, any photograph, any scrap of ephemera with the Puente de España on it.
I now have ten cards and one photograph. Then I did the thing every collector eventually does. I asked why?
A Bridge Paid For by the People Who Needed It
Picture Manila before 1626. Intramuros, the walled city, sat on the south bank of the Pasig: government, church, garrison. Binondo sat on the north bank: Chinese merchants, warehouses, money. Between them, a river, and the only way across was by ferry.
Every crossing cost something. Every bale of cloth, every crate of goods, every trader going to sell paid the ferryman.
So the Sangleys — Manila's Chinese merchants — did the math. Work began in 1626 under Governor-General Fernando de Silva and finished in 1630 under Juan Niño de Tabora. And here is the detail I love most: it cost the Spanish treasury nothing. The Sangleys paid for it, because a bridge was cheaper than a lifetime of ferry fares.
They called it the Puente Grande. Ten spans, stone piers, a timber deck.
The Recollect priest Lucas de Jesús María is usually named as its architect. The real engineering feat belongs to an Augustinian friar, Antonio Herrera. He diverted half the Pasig into the city moats and esteros, dammed the riverbed, and built the piers one half of the river at a time. The stone was Guadalupe adobe, a volcanic tuff quarried from what is now Guadalupe Viejo in Makati; ironically, this is where we currently reside.
Now, why did the Spanish care so much? Because this was the only permanent link between government and commerce. Whoever controlled the bridge controlled the city's pulse, and they knew it cut both ways. The wooden deck was deliberate. At the south end stood a small fort, the Fortín y Mira. If trouble came from the north, they could quickly destroy the timber and seal off Intramuros. During the Chinese uprising of 1638, that is exactly what happened.
The Spanish cut a Chinese-built bridge to keep the Chinese out. Manila history rarely does irony halfway.
In 1814 the timber gave way to stone arches, and people called it the Puente de Piedra. Then on 3 June 1863, an earthquake flattened much of Manila, and the central piers sank. For years the city made do with a Puente de Barcas, a pontoon bridge floating on cascos at Calle Rosario. Remember that spot. It comes back later.
On 1 January 1875, the rebuilt bridge reopened with a new name: Puente de España. Eight spans. Two steel-ribbed central arches replacing the sunken piers. Triple-branched lamps, ordered from Europe through the engineer José Echeverría. This is the bridge on most of my cards.
The People Who Crossed
A bridge is only as interesting as the people on it. This one had a crowd.
The traffic jam of 1899. The Rev. Clay MacCauley, writing in A Day in the Very Noble City, Manila (1899), complained: "Crossing the Bridge of Spain near the noon time is no speedy achievement." He describes American soldiers directing traffic, and "freemen and prisoners of war" moving in the same crowd. So Manila traffic is not a modern invention. It has a 127-year pedigree. I find that oddly comforting.
The sunset drive. Edith Moses, wife of a member of the Philippine Commission, wrote in Unofficial Letters of an Official's Wife (1900) about driving over the bridge at sunset. Same bridge, very different mood. Same city, depending on where you sat.
The collector next door. On my Arias card, a man named Ygnacio García wrote in red ink in Spanish that he'd heard the recipient collected cards and wanted to exchange. "Answer me this one and put the stamp on the picture side." His address: Magallanes 7, Intramuros — a street at the south end of the bridge. And he followed his own instruction. The stamp is on the picture side. A fellow postcard nerd, more than a century ahead of me, living within walking distance of the bridge on his card.
The ones who probably crossed. José Rizal stayed at the Hotel de Oriente in Binondo and was later held at Fort Santiago in Intramuros. With only the Puente de España and the Puente Colgante to choose from, he likely walked or rode across one of them. I found no record naming a specific crossing, so I'll leave that as a strong guess, not a fact. The same goes for the American officers, soldiers, and Commission officials who worked on both banks from 1898 onward.
Then 1898 changed everything. On 1 May, Dewey sank the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. Manila fell on 13 August. The next day, the Manila post office opened under American authority. The Bridge of Spain now stood in an American city — and kept its Spanish name for the rest of its life.
The Tram That Crossed the River
One of my cards stopped me cold. Postmarked 8 February 1907, published by Photo Supply Co.: an open-sided electric tram, striped curtains rolled down, gliding across the Bridge of Spain beneath a trolley wire. The sender, a man named Santiago, wrote in Spanish: "Qué te parece el puente de España? (en la actualidad)." What do you think of the Bridge of Spain, as it is now?
As it is now. In 1907, "now" meant electricity.
The idea was Spanish. In 1878, a Public Works official, León Monssour, proposed a five-line streetcar network for Manila, including one line from Plaza San Gabriel in Binondo over the Puente de España into Intramuros. In 1882, Jacobo Zóbel de Zangroniz, the engineer Luciano M. Bremon, and the Madrid banker Adolfo Bayo took up the concession as La Compañía de Tranvías de Filipinas. They built its five lines between 1885 and 1889. Four were horse-drawn; the Malabon line ran on steam.
Look again at my 1898 Recuerdo de Manila card. A horse-drawn car on the bridge is marked "FILIPINAS." Very likely one of theirs.
By 1902, the old system was tired — an average of only ten cars a day across all five lines. Enter the Americans. On 20 October 1902, the Philippine Commission passed Act No. 484, opening franchises for electric power and electric railways in Manila. The bidding drew exactly one bid: Charles M. Swift of Detroit. On 24 March 1903, Manila's Municipal Board accepted it through Ordinance 44. Three days later, the company that became Meralco—the Manila Electric Railroad and Light Company—was incorporated in New Jersey with $1,000,000 in capital from Detroit and Pittsburgh investors.
Here's what matters today: private money, not the colonial treasury, paid for the tram. Just like the Sangley merchants who built the first bridge in 1630.
Electric service opened in April 1905, and that same year they laid tracks across the Puente de España. The cars were Brill "Type 2 Convertible" streetcars from Philadelphia, about 50 passengers each, powered by a steam plant at Isla de Provisor through a 500-volt wire. The motormen and conductors were all Filipino.
About nine years on the bridge. About forty years for the whole network. After the war, Meralco found restoration too costly and stuck to power. Converted army jeeps took over the routes — the first jeepneys. Manila went almost forty years without rail until LRT Line 1 opened in 1985.
I think about this every time I fill up the tank. In 1903, one bid, one ordinance, and three days later, a company existed. Two years later, electric cars were crossing the Pasig. Today, with gasoline prices where they are, a quiet electric tram from Binondo to Intramuros sounds like a dream. But between the franchises, the right-of-way fights and the politics, I doubt we will ever build something like it again. We had it. We let it go.
Ten Cards, Sixteen Years
Here is the whole collection, laid out earliest to latest. Ten cards, September 1898 to the eve of the 1914 flood. Lay them side by side, and the bridge starts to move: lamps vanish, the deck widens, a tram appears.
This is what I love about postcards. They were cheap, everyday things. People bought them, scribbled a line, and stuck on a stamp without a second thought. But each one froze a real moment — a crowd, a tram, a lamp that's long gone — the things we forget or take for granted. Pull on one thread and a whole century unspools. Who was Ygnacio García? Did Santiago's Angela in Barcelona ever write back? Every card answers one question and opens three more.
That's the hook. That's why I keep buying them.
A postcard has two sides, and the back often says as much as the front. Here are all ten, picture side on the left, address side on the right. Watch the stamps as you go: plain American stamps under a U.S. Army "Philippine Station" postmark in 1898, then American stamps overprinted "PHILIPPINES," then the Philippine Islands series in centavos. The country's changing hands are right there in each card's corner.
Plate 1 · Recuerdo de Manila · written 5/11 September 1898
The only drawn image in the set: a chromolithograph of the 1875 bridge, with triple-branched lamps, lattice iron spans and a horse-drawn car marked "FILIPINAS." A German wrote "Lieber Max…" across the picture. On the back, an American 2¢ Washington stamp sits on a bilingual Spanish "Tarjeta Postal," canceled "Philippine Station / San Francisco, Cal. / Sep 12 1898." It went through Hong Kong and reached Erfurt on 17 October. The "T" mark means postage due, so Max probably paid to read it.
Plate 2 · Albert Aust, Hamburg · postmarked 20 December, likely 1898
A raised three-quarter view: lattice iron arch, drum pier, lamps, a crowded deck. "Julie" wrote her message across the picture in German Kurrent, as undivided-back cards required. The back is a Spanish "Tarjeta Postal" with an unoverprinted U.S. stamp, a Manila 20 December 7:30 PM datestamp, and a blue crayon "10" postage-due charge, addressed to Kahla, Germany. The year isn't legible, but the stamp and the due mark point to 1898, four months into the American occupation.
Plate 3 · "Greeting from Manila" No. 126 · 2 April 1900
Shot from river level. Two figures in white stand at the water's edge by a quay bollard, the iron spans and lamps behind them. The back reads "Union Postale Universelle / PHILIPPINES / Emprimé," sent at the cheaper printed-matter rate, with a 2¢ stamp now overprinted PHILIPPINES and a "Mil. Sta. No. 1, Manila" postmark. It reached Gross-Schönau, Saxony, on 8 May 1900.
Plate 4 · Tipo-Lit. Germania · unused, c. 1899–1901
The only view from on the deck itself. A man in white walks the planked footway toward Binondo, past moored steamers and rooftop signs for "CLARKE'S" and "WILLIAMS, CHANDLER & CO." English shop signs place it early in the American years. The unused back prints "Post card" in eight languages above "FILIPINAS" — the Spanish name for the country, still in print.
Plate 5 · Arias, El Puente de España (Manila) · postmarked August, c. 1899–1905
The most panoramic view, taken from high ground on the Intramuros bank, with steamers and cascos crowding the Binondo quay. Only the picture side is shown, and for good reason: everything happens there. Ygnacio García of Magallanes 7, Intramuros, wrote in red ink asking to trade cards, and told his new correspondent to put the stamp on the picture side. He did the same. The overprinted 2¢ stamp and the Manila August datestamp sit right on the image.
Plate 6 · Private Mailing Card · typed 3 March 1903
The clearest side elevation in the set: small stone arches, the two iron spans, the larger arches, lamps on the parapet. The message is typed in German: "Kind regards, next week I go to China." The back reads "Private Mailing Card / Authorized by Act of Congress of May 19, 1898," typed "Switzerland via Suez," and arrived in Zürich on 7 April, five weeks later. The catch: they removed those lamps in 1901. The publisher was selling an old photograph.
Plate 7 · Squires, Bingham & Co. · 6 October 1905
The widened bridge, looking downstream: bracketed sidewalk, arcaded railing, telegraph poles where the lamps once stood, calesas and carromatas on the roadway. Signed "Manila 6 Octubre 1905." The fleur-de-lis bordered back carries a 2¢ PHILIPPINES stamp and is addressed to Sta. María Samaniego in Madrid — "Spagne." Seven years after the handover, the Bridge of Spain was still writing home.
Plate 8 · Photo Supply Co. · 8 February 1907
The first card with the electric tranvía (tram): an open single-truck car with striped curtains under the trolley wire, a smokestack behind the sheds. Santiago asks, "¿Qué te parece el puente de España? (en la actualidad)." The back is marked "Mala Alemana" for the German mail steamer, with a 4-centavo Philippine Islands stamp, to Señorita Doña Angela Franco, Calle Bailén 118, Barcelona.
Plate 9 · Photo Supply Co., hand-coloured · 11 May 1910
The same photograph as Plate 8, colored three years later. The tram is now green, a boy's shirt is striped red, the river blue-green. The divided back separates message from address, with a 4¢ Philippine Islands stamp, sent to Hong Kong and signed L. Melin. One negative, sold twice.
Plate 10 · Edward H. Mitchell, M-13 · unused, c. 1907–1914
Printed in San Francisco for the American market: a pink sunset sky, a deck full of calesas, piers tinted brick-red. The caption says "250 years old," which undercounts—from 1630 it was closer to 280, though most of what you see dates from 1875. The back charges "1¢ United States and possessions," domestic rate. The last view in the set, and the bridge's final form before the 1914 flood.
They Don't Make Them Like They Used To
In September 1914, nonstop rains swelled the Pasig and broke the central pier. A temporary truss carried light traffic while the city built a replacement one block downstream, at Calle Rosario — the same spot where the old pontoon Puente de Barcas once floated after the 1863 earthquake. I told you it would come back.
Jones Bridge replaced it, designed by Juan M. Arellano, guarded by Ramón Martínez's four La Madre Filipina statues, and named for U.S. Rep. William Atkinson Jones, who sponsored the 1916 Jones Law. It opened in 1921. The Puente de España was dismantled. Its footings were removed.
Jones Bridge has had its own hard life since it was destroyed in the Battle of Manila in 1945, rebuilt as a plain girder bridge in 1946, and dressed up again in Beaux-Arts style in 2019 — for about ₱20 million donated by Chinese-Filipino businessmen. Nearly four centuries later, the Chinese community was still paying for the crossing. Some things in Manila never change.
Today the Pasig has bridges by the dozen. Concrete, steel, efficient, forgettable. You cross them without looking down. Nobody writes "What do you think of the bridge, as it is now?" on the back of a postcard about any of them.
The Bridge of Spain was different. Merchants paid for it. Friars dammed a river to build it. Soldiers burned it, an earthquake sank it, Europe lit it, America widened it and ran a tram across it. For almost three hundred years, everyone in Manila crossed it. Then a flood took it, and the city simply moved one block down.
They don't make bridges like that anymore.
So the next time you're on Jones Bridge, look upstream. There's nothing there. But for a stretch of water with nothing on it, it has an awful lot to say.
And I'm still hunting. I'm still hunting for a card I haven't found yet, and I already know what's on it.
Do you have a photograph or postcard of the Puente de España, or a family story about crossing it? Tell me in the comments. I'd love to see it.
Sources
Puente de España, Wikipedia (citing W.C. Bunnel, "El Puente de España, 1626–1914", Professional Memoirs, 1915)
Lou Gopal, "Jones Bridge", Manila Nostalgia, 2013 (MacCauley 1899 and Moses 1900 quotes)
Alfred F. Kugel, Military Postal History of the U.S. Action in the Philippines, 1898
Gary L. Satre, "The Metro Manila LRT System: A Historical Perspective", Japan Railway & Transport Review 16, 1998
Tranvía and Charles M. Swift, Wikipedia
"LRT expansions remind of tranvia days", VERA Files (citing R. Rodrigo, Meralco: A Century of Service)
"Tranvías de Manila y Corregidor", Renacimiento Manila, 2020
Jones Bridge, Wikipedia; "Newly renovated Jones Bridge reopens", Philippine Daily Inquirer, 26 Nov 2019; Interaksyon, 27 Nov 2019
Postcards and photographs: collection of the author
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